Chapter 24
An Introduction To Photo-Paint

Featuring

If you are like most Corel users, you have spent a majority of your time in DRAW, watching with a mixture of eagerness, excitement, and fear as PHOTO-PAINT (that other program in the box) makes its move. First slowly, with a few good magazine reviews...then with more momentum, as talented drawing specialists try their hand at more painterly effects...and finally—how would Ross Perot describe it?—like a giant sucking sound funneling in users from all corners of the graphic community.

As we said in the previous chapter, the bitmap era is upon us, whether or not we are ready for it.

Why does PHOTO-PAINT evoke such a range of emotion? Because it is the closest thing to painting that electronic media knows, and painting is (gasp) real art. Drawing with vector objects is a different experience, and while not to imply that it is something less than art, the tools of its trade are rooted in mathematics and science, not paintbrushes and canvas. When you work in PAINT, you have ownership of every dot that makes up an image. One brilliant move and your painting shines. One false move, and it could be destroyed. Thank goodness for Undo...

We are at the same time delighted and guilt-ridden about offering these two chapters on PAINT. In previous editions we have ignored PAINT altogether, and in the face of such growing popularity, that is a literary capital offense. Yet, PAINT really needs a book all for itself. We are glad to reintroduce coverage of it here, but we will not pretend to do it justice.

Our quest is to expose you to the foundation and concepts that underlie PAINT, and the ways that you can use it to help you in your work. In continuing the theme of this book, we’re not going to teach you fine art; you either have those skills or you don’t, and either way, no book is going to help you. And we are not going to just throw a bunch of special effects at you. We flirted with that in the previous chapter, and all of the effects we showed you there (and more) are available from within PAINT.

However—and this is a large however—PAINT can perform a wealth of services outside of the “fine art” arena, and we will identify many of them in this chapter and the one that follows.

PAINT or DRAW?

Here is the most important fact to remember about the two programs:

CorelDRAW is vector-based and PAINT is pixel-based.

Remember that and recite it like a mantra. While you can apply effects and filtering to bitmaps in DRAW, you wouldn’t turn to it to work on pixels, and you wouldn’t turn to PAINT to create typographically accurate text or other “smart” vector objects.

We have discussed in previous chapters the fundamental difference between vector- and bitmap-based applications, but it bears repeating here. A vector is a mathematical description of a curve or shape. Vector objects can be filled with a certain color and stroked with a certain line thickness. DRAW provides you with the tools to create and arrange vector objects as well as different methods of filling those objects with color.

A pixel is a solitary square of color. Pretty boring by itself, but you can make a grid of multiple pixels to create an image. The fun begins when you use the tools of PAINT to change the appearance of those pixels in ways that mimic traditional tools. “I used to spend a great deal of time using DRAW to create photo-realistic images,” says Ron Richey, our resident PHOTO-PAINT expert. “But then I came to realize that my technique was too mechanical and didn’t allow me to expressively follow my creative desires. I now use DRAW to plan and set up images that will ultimately be completed in PAINT.”

The Many Faces of PAINT

What do you want to do with PAINT? If you can name it, you can probably do it. The only limitations you will encounter are your own because PAINT has the tools to create a veritable dream studio. Paper, pencils, pastels, oils, acrylics, canvases, watercolors, airbrushes, darkroom—they’re all available on the PAINT desktop. PAINT offers you:

•  A professional darkroom with a retouching assistant always on call. You’ll find capabilities for image editing, collage, special effects, and other techniques that can’t be done in a traditional darkroom.

•  An art studio with pencils, pastels, oils, acrylics, watercolors, airbrushes, and a few tools unique to computer software, such as the Image Sprayer. If you’ve never sprayed an image before, you’re in for a treat...

•  Complete services for creating Web graphics.

•  Many special effects such as drop shadows and theatrical lighting.

•  Enough filters to make you go blind.

A Quick Tour of PAINT

The next chapter offers more detail about various PAINT tools and techniques. Here are some prominent ones that all users should know about, regardless of their level of artistic skill.

The Professional Darkroom

Do you like to restore old photographs? You can remove wrinkles, scratches, and dust, as well as discoloration and stains. Figure 24.1 is an old photo of our lead author’s grandmother, and you can see how PAINT was able to restore it.

PAINT 9 offers several new sets of image-editing tools, including a very impressive set of all-in-one sharpening tools. There are so many ways to sharpen a photo (including one called “unsharp”—go figure), it takes an expert to know the difference. The Tune Sharpness dialog, shown in Figure 24.2, shows you previews of four sharpening functions at once, so you can better determine which one to use.